We don’t usually publish on Thursdays but I just received this important update:
“Over the past year, the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (FEC) has been working to get back on its feet after a period of relative inactivity and disorganization.
At present, the FEC’s full member communities are Twin Oaks Community (Virginia) and East Wind Community (Missouri). A number of other communities have recently dissolved or left the FEC. Alpha Farm (Oregon) has recently joined as a Community in Dialogue—a preliminary status for communities exploring full membership.
Alongside ongoing operations and smaller projects, the FEC has recently been focused on three main priorities: 1. Getting our corporate registration and tax filing in order 2. Reviewing and updating our policies 3. Regaining editing access to thefec.org website and updating it
The current delegates continue to work closely together with a renewed commitment to the FEC’s goal: to make egalitarian communities available to all who seek them.
We appreciate the patience and support of our wider network during this rebuilding process.
—The Delegates of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities”
There are 5 exciting and currently relavent events happening in Louisa all hosted by intentional communities. Click thru on the links for more details and ticketing options.
There is some description of all of these events below, but this post focuses on two adjacent events: the Communities Conference (including this years themes) and the Convergence of Intentional Communities, over the Labor Day and and the two days beyond).
Here is the official announcement of the Communities Conference Aug 29 thru Sept 1st. Mark your calendar.
I am unusually excited about this years gatherings. We tried some new things last year, which are bigger and better organized this year. Last year, Cutty and Quanta organized the FEST space at several of the conference site events which celebrated and promoted BIPOC culture. This year they are back with a larger organizing team including Saman (aka Macaco) from Liberation Arts who was the minister of culture at Quink. These are the principal organizers for this years YasVille project, which is in it’s way a focused conference within a themed conference and festival inside a celebration.
Saman at work
In our many conversations about how to transition away from a dominantly white communities, one of the points which has been made is that simple DEI is not enough and what is truly needed is a radical culture shift within intentional communities. With this in mind these organizers have developed one of the two focal themes of this years event, Transforming Community Culture to support BIPOC and People of the Global Majority Representation, Empowerment, and Long-Term Retention. You can go more deeply into the theme here. Here is more information on the YasVille affinity space. which is hosting this theme.
Similarly, the other theme of this year’s event is Resistance and Resilience. Every US american concerned with human rights is asking themselves about how they are going to respond to the current political environment. And almost every intentional community has to be asking itself the same questions.
How can we show our opposition to these terrible policies?
How can we keep vulnerable members of our community safe?
How can we prepare for the worst of what might be coming?
How can we do this without inducing trauma and paranoia?
If you have a workshop proposal which is intentional community specific, please submit it here. If you are from a community seeking new members it is not too early to think about what you are going to say at Meet the Communities. And if you are coming from far away and need help with rides, it is never too early to reach out for our assistance. Moonshot is driving I 40 all the way from Pheonix, they can give you a ride. Or someone else who is that friendly and generous.
One of the other things we tried last year was the first ever Convergence of Intentional Communities (which the organizers call CIC – pronounced “kick” for short). It starts Sept 1st, immediately after the Communities Conference. If you look at the Communities Conference as a matchmaking event, placing people looking for communities in the same place as intentional communities which are seeking new members. Then CIC is a networking event.
We are inviting people who are already living in or are deeply connected to an existing intentional community to come and figure out how formed and functioning communities can work better together to meet their needs. This could be anything from exchange programs to sharing recruiting strategies to disassembling systemic oppressions we have drifted into and more. Unlike the Communities Conference we are discouraging people who are not in or affiliated with an existing IC from attending. This is in small part to avoid folks who have very strong ideas about what ICs should do and have no intention of being part of them, but have a lot to tell them anyway.
There are a couple of things to know about CIC before we start. First is that this is the last year it will be held at Twin Oaks for a while. We helped start it with a bunch of support from the Foundation for Intentional Community – the FIC. But Twin Oaks does not need this event and there are many ICs which have conferences and gatherings as their principal businesses and they would be happy to host it in 2026. So it only makes sense to move the hosting away from Twin Oaks to another community next year. 3579
The other thing to know about the Convergence is that it might not be called this in the future. We had the idea for the event in 2024 and choose “Convergence” as a working name. This year we are going to have a Twin Oaks style naming party as one of the events at CIC and see if we end up with something different to call it for next year. We will also choose the next host for CIC at this years event, so bring your proposals.
These are not the only events of importance happening in Louisa county in the coming months. Acorn is hosting Roots and Resilience: BIPOC Farmers & Intentional Communities Conference, a transformative gathering designed to empower, connect, and inspire BIPOC farmers, land stewards, and intentional community builders. Over three dynamic days, we’ll explore sustainable farming practices, land access strategies, community development, and personal wellness—all within a supportive environment rooted in cultural resilience and collective growth. May 30 thru June 1st.
The Twin Oaks Women’s Gathering is the week before the Communities Conference, August 22 thru 24th. One description of this event is that “we are celebrating Ourselves in a space of healing and empowerment for all who have lived experience as women.” Workshops, performances, drum circle, ceremony & more!
Also at Twin Oaks on Sept 12 thru 14 is the Queer Gathering. This is a co-created event, so while the organizing team will set up the event site and create a general schedule of activities, the content is largely up to YOU! There is an opportunity to lead a workshop, DJ some of the dance party, bring your instruments to jam, offer an interest/identity-based meet-up (BIPOC dinner, non-binary lunch, comic book breakfast, etc), and more! Just let us know ahead of time at twinoaksqueergathering@gmail.com or post a card on the bulletin board when you get here!
I am pretty sure i am correct in asserting that all of these events have a “no one is turned away for lack of funds” policy, worry about logistics first, if you can reasonably get here and really want to attend, we will figure out how to get you a ticket.
We’re now moving into mid-April on Facebook. During this stretch we had some posts that were barely seen and some posts with good viewing numbers.
Let’s start with a post from Southern Exposure, talking about garden watering.
I’m not sure how many of our Facebook readers have gardens to water but while it got both a like and a love, only forty folks saw it.
East Wind wanted to show off their animal life. Facebook now has something called “Reels” which are very short little videos that you can post (maybe they are trying to compete with TikTok?) and East Wind used this to give little clips of various creatures.
These are various stills from the video, which can be seen here.
And, here’s a still of Pigeon, the star of the show:
While two people loved this, it’s impossible to know how many folks saw it because, for some reason, Facebook doesn’t track its ‘Reels’.
I found this next post on the Twin Oaks Queer Gathering site but it really affects all of the summer events on the conference site.
This post did very well on FB with two loves, three cares, sixteen likes, three comments, and over a hundred and eighty views.
Finally, the FIC posted an interview with the amazing Ira.
This got six likes and a comment, but less than eighty views.
As opposed to Acorn’s spring gardening post, Twin Oaks posted about the snowy winter.
This did a little better, with six likes, three loves, and just under ninety views.
And with spring coming, the Twin Oaks folks are preparing for conferences and gatherings. We reposted announcements for both the Queer Gathering and the Women’s Conference.
The Queer Gathering usually posts about their “Awesomeness”.
Surprisingly, to me at least, since events often don’t do very well at all, this post did the best of the week, which wasn’t great. It only got three likes but it did get just over a hundred views.
Also, the Women’s Gathering posted. Since I couldn’t think of much to compete with “Awesomeness”, posted some of the variant spellings of “women” from the seventies.
Unfortunately, this didn’t do well at all. While it got four loves and a like, it got less than fifty views.
March did not begin well on Facebook, but I think that these posts were interesting and encouraging.
East Wind started off reporting on a cake that one of their members made for Valentine’s Day.
This post didn’t do badly at all–it got six likes, five loves, a comment, and a hundred and thirty views.
In an intercommunal cooperative effort, Pam from Twin Oaks wrote a book on “Market Farming” that the folks at Acorn (through their business Southern Exposure) are selling.
Unfortunately, although three people loved it, just over fifty people saw it.
East Wind also posted about the snowfall there.
This did okay, with seven likes, two loves, and a bit over a hundred views.
And the Twin Oaks Communities Conference announced they will be back again this year.
Sky Blue is a former Twin Oaker and a long time community activist. Here they talk about how economics interfaces with communities and what kind of economic models are possible for communities–including income sharing.
It’s a brand new year. The FEC is all but gone and the coming US administration may be as anti-sharing as you can get, but I believe that this is a time when sharing and community are needed more than ever.
Commune Life is a blog dedicated, first of all, to egalitarian income-sharing communities, and beyond this to communities in general (and how to start them) as well as exploring ways of radical sharing. I also want to explore mutual aid, clusters of communities, interdependence, and the networking of communities–with perhaps various types of cooperatives and other alternative institutions. I’m expanding the focus of Commune Life to areas that I see are connected to communal living (like relational work, the importance of infrastructure, and the need for more experimental communities). I will still limit the focus on general intentional community stuff since much of that is covered by the Foundation for Intentional Community and its allies.
It’s going to be a challenging year. I’m hoping the stuff published here will help at least some people realize the need for more sharing and community, not less. I intend to keep publishing pieces from income-sharing communities (communes) and other interesting communities and alternatives to show that all this can work and even be fun. Hopefully it will inspire more people (maybe even you) to find ways of doing more sharing and more community building in the coming year. Beyond that, I guess that we will just have to see what this “interesting” year ahead will bring.
Maybe through communities, we can build some of the bridges we need
Having finally finished up with the July Facebook posts and having taken the month of August of from the blog, now that we are beginning October, we will start collecting the September posts.
I started with a post from Twin Oaks about the makeshift kitchen they put for the summer events in the one building in Emerald City (their former industrial area) that hadn’t burned down–Oz! (I used to joke that the difference between the Oz books and movies and Twin Oaks was that in the books and movies, the Emerald City was in Oz but at Twin Oaks, Oz was in Emerald City. Unfortunately, now Emerald City is gone but Oz was relatively untouched.)
This (the second post in September after my ‘we’re back’ post) did pretty well, with five likes, four loves, three cares, and a hundred and ninety-two views.
East Wind, a community that is often helpful to others, worked on a neighbor’s roof.
This also did pretty well, with eleven likes, one love, and a hundred and seventy-nine views.
At Acorn, it’s squash season.
This did okay on Facebook, with six likes, three loves, and a hundred and eleven views.
Finally, the FIC (Foundation for Intentional Community) has been giving online tours of various communities and here’s when they did some familiar Louisa county ones.
For a post that said little except the FIC was giving virtual tours and posted the four pictures that the FIC used, this did amazingly well, with thirteen likes, two loves, one comment, two shares (which is probably part of why it did so well on Facebook), and a very nice three hundred and ten views.
This is the last stuff from the month of July. It was a slow week on the commune front and I only posted three new things on Facebook–and two of them were from Acorn.
This post, unfortunately, didn’t do so well, with just two likes, one comment, and only seventy-three views.
Acorn’s first post was about the garlics and shallots that their business was offering.
This did just a bit better with five likes and ninety-three views.
Finally, Acorn also posted a video with Ira opening it.
This is, of course, a still from the video. Here’s a link to the Instagram video.
And this did the best of the bunch–maybe because of Ira (who is often a draw). It got eleven likes, four loves, five comments, three shares, and a hundred and eighty-five views. We definitely had a lot more posts with a lot more views but this was by far the most viewed of the new ones this week.
commune life 